Hit Piece #1The Ted Cruz Quote Compost
Yellow Journalism is the old term — created over a hundred years ago — to describe media reporting that is based upon sensationalism. So, for instance, when a young woman is portrayed in the movie Reefer Madness, smoking marijuana and jumping through a high-rise window, implying that a few puffs of reefer will turn any peace-loving person into a violent maniac . . . it doesn’t get much yellower than that.
Editorial cartoon by Leon Barritt, 1898. Newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, full-length, dressed as the Yellow Kid (a popular cartoon character of the day), each pushing against opposite sides of a pillar of wooden blocks that spells WAR. This is a satire of the Pulitzer and Hearst newspapers’ role in drumming up USA public opinion to go to war with Spain.
When a Hillary Clinton Super PAC bashes Donald Trump, or vice versa, we call it a hit piece. Or hit job. Tantamount to a paid-for murder. In this case, someone’s character is being assassinated.
Thank God for defamation laws, which prevent a lot of liars from doing their worst; but, unfortunately, don’t prevent distortions that slither past the bounds of the law. For instance, did you know that the Bible actually says that there is no God? Yup. Psalm 14:1 says, “There is no God.”
But guess what; it doesn’t say that. The entire sentence reads, “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Context makes a difference. Lifting information out of its original context changes its meaning. Sometimes radically.
Blurbs for books, movies, and Broadway shows are notorious for transforming negative opinions into positive ones. The David O. Russell movie Accidental Love was deemed, “A comedic masterstroke,” by A.A. Dowd of the A.V. Club. But wait . . . that’s not true! Here is the complete sentence from which those three words were culled:
To be fair to whoever refashioned Accidental Love from the abandoned scraps of Nailed [the movie’s original title], there’s little reason to believe that the ideal, untroubled version of the material would have been a comedic masterstroke.
As you can see, Dowd meant the opposite of the blurb; namely, that if the movie — which suffered a variety of production setbacks — had been made under the best of circumstances, it would NOT be a comedic masterstroke.
Wars, religious movements, and political campaigns are often waged on the basis of falsehoods. The Iraq War of the previous decade comes to mind. As does the whole notion of Jihad as interpreted by Muslim extremists.
Remember the 2012 Republican Convention slogan? “We Built It” — sprung from a willful distortion of something President Obama had said a mere month before. In other words, they never had a good slogan; or else they wouldn’t have gone with a clear distortion at the last minute (And that’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it? Clear distortion.).
2012 Republican National Convention
Fox News jumped all over this as evidence that Obama was anti-business. But the meaning of the passage, from which this quote was extracted, is entirely different.
[su_pullquote]
It takes a lot of work by a lot of people to misconstrue those inspiring words as something nefarious. But that’s the Republican party for you.
[/su_pullquote]
Essentially, the President said that America the Great was built through a cooperative effort. “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.” Individualism is part of it; but it’s not enough. The infrastructure, the Internet, the middle class, sending men to the moon — these were all accomplished because of BOTH individual initiative AND collective effort. “We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people . . . I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”
And speaking of collective effort, it takes a lot of work by a lot of people to misconstrue those inspiring words as something nefarious. But that’s the Republican party for you.
My all-time favorite hit-man is Ted Cruz! From his dozens and dozens of half-truths, carefully crafted distortions, and outright pants-on-fire lies — seriously, check out his Politifact file; I like to joke that the good news about Ted Cruz is that fully one-third of his statements are mostly kinda sorta true-ish — my favorite bit of stink from the Ted Cruz compost is something he said last November about the current transgender brouhaha: The “federal government is going after school districts, trying to force them to let boys shower with little girls.”
Dammit, Ted . . . can’t we have ANY fun?
Politifact rated this statement FALSE, and cited fourteen sources in its analysis, including: The Advocate; the National Center for Transgender Equality; a professor emeritus in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the ACLU of Illinois; the Chicago Tribune; the Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education; and The New York Times.
[su_pullquote]
Fully one-third of what Ted Cruz says is mostly kinda sorta tru-ish.
[/su_pullquote]
Ted Cruz cited NO sources. He just made that shit up, in front of millions of gullible listeners.
But Wait, There’s More!
In Part Two of this piece, we’re gonna talk about hit pieces that don’t involve famous people. In Part Three, we’re gonna swim deeper into the importance of context. And in Part Four, I’m gonna tell you about a hit job that was done on me. No, not by Ted Cruz. That would be too proud for this humble blog; which, after all, explores sex, religion, and politics from the point of view of the Little Guy — the OTHER 1%.
No, a disgruntled pet sitter took a lot of time to write a hit piece on me in a place so obscure that, were I not to point it out to you, probably no one else would ever benefit from it. So, you’re welcome, disgruntled pet sitter!
Wonderfully written, and so true! Too many times, quotes are taken out of context and sway people to believe the opposite of what the original speaker/writer had in mind. I can’t wait until part 2 of your blog post!
Well Brother – these are exceptional musings amusing singularly my funny bone. It is humorous, ironic, and often deep in its insights, subtly emerging from the irony. Keep the efforts up like this and I assure you a satisfied death, which is the best any of us can hope to expect as our final reward.
Thank you, Jan, for replying on the website.
Well Brother – these are exceptional musings amusing singularly my funny bone. It is humorous, ironic, and often deep in its insights, subtly emerging from the irony. Keep the efforts up like this and I assure you a satisfied death, which is the best any of us can hope to expect as our final reward.
Thank you, Jan, for replying on the website.
Wonderfully written, and so true! Too many times, quotes are taken out of context and sway people to believe the opposite of what the original speaker/writer had in mind. I can’t wait until part 2 of your blog post!